50 Years – Has Anything Changed?

I wrote this piece for a writing class four or five years ago. After listening to all the MLK tributes yesterday, I thought it might be worth resurrecting.

“Is it fair to hold OUR children back in order to let the negrah kids catch up?”

I was only 16 when I heard these words come from a teacher’s mouth. She was worried that the new busing laws would surely hinder the progress of her white students.

Although her statement wasn’t considered politically incorrect at the time, even insensitive, I knew something about those words was wrong. I didn’t dare question her. After all, I was only a child and those were the days we children were to be “seen but not heard.”

It was a steamy August evening in Mobile, Alabama, 1969. I was about to enter my senior year in high school. Busing had been mandated by the government. Zoning lines had been re-drawn. For a year lawyers had lobbed appeals at the courts, trying their best to clog up the implementation of this country’s biggest social revolution.

Like most teens about to embark on their senior year, I remember feeling somewhat unsettled about life in general. Rumor had it that my neighborhood had been sliced in half because of the new laws. One side would remain at Murphy High School. Our side would be redistricted to Davidson. But honestly, I didn’t put much stock in it. I was much more stressed about earning enough babysitting money to buy the $19 Ladybug dress I wanted for my first day as a senior.

I remember this one particularly hot, sticky evening. The summer was drawing to a close. The citronella lanterns were all staked around the back patio. I had obediently set up the card tables in the living room and wrapped them beautifully in white linen cloths. The good china and crystal were out, the silver polished. Everything was perfect except for the tension that was building. That tension reared its ugly head every time my mother threw a party.

The house came alive when the Hendersons, the Morgans, the Colemans* – plus others in my parents’ Sunday School class – arrived for Supper Club. Our minister, Dr. Edington, and his wife were included, of course. These same five or six couples had been gathering for years, each month rotating to a different house.

It was midway through the evening when I caught wind of the whispers, that something might be wrong. Their tone hushed as if to keep the truth from my sister and me.

“A lot of my teacher friends are not signing contracts, they are afraid of the violence.” My mother was a teacher at Davidson and for the first time in my life I heard fear in her voice. “I’m not putting my kids at risk.”

“The Feds are mandating we bus these kids but who’s paying for the damn buses?,” one of the men chimed in. Another felt the whole thing was an anti-South campaign, forcing cities like Mobile to take the brunt of “this hypocritical social project” while Boston, New York and Washington were being given a pass. The words “carpetbaggers” and “reconstruction” flew through the room like flies.

The room filled quickly with tones of fear and resentment. For the first time I realized something big might be happening, something threatening. Something that might actually affect me.

“Their blood is red, just like ours,” Dr. Edington said slowly in his deep, pastoral voice. A deafening silence sliced through the room, his wisdom changing the tone of the conversation. My dear father jumped up almost simultaneously. He headed for the kitchen and reached high above the stove, to the cabinet that held the liquor. He pulled out the purple velvet bag, the one that held the Crown Royal, the whisky that only came out at special times.

1969: My Dad and me.

As Daddy circled the room filling the highballs, Mrs. Henderson stumbled for the right words to fill the void. “You’re right, David.” She was always the gentle one, the perfect Southern lady.

Then Mr. Morgan, the life of the party, the one who always had one too many drinks, responded to her with, “Oh, Janie, it’s a violation of our freedom of choice, it’s not the American way.”

“Those mothers don’t want their children mixed up with ours anymore than we want ours with them,” another chimed in. “Their families are as invested in their own schools as we are,” she went on. Why make a child ride a bus halfway across town? It seemed unfair to both sides.

Then, I recognized Mr. Coleman’s thick Southern drawl. “Today the govment’ll tell us which school our children must attend. Tomorrow they’ll tell us which church to attend.”


As I type this, fifty years after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., I believe we’ve made headway in race relations. Yes, we still have a long way to go but it seems what we’ve gained in the racial arena, we’ve lost on the political battlefield. Not a day goes by that I don’t open Facebook to hate and intolerance. Fear. The scene I just wrote about is still very present in our living rooms and in blogs and on social media. 

I’m tired of it and I don’t want to wait 50 years for it to get better.

 

*All names were changed, except for Dr. Edington’s, one of the wisest men I’ve ever known.

14 Comments
  • Janis
    Posted at 07:56h, 06 April

    Beautifully said my friend.

    • lisaweldon
      Posted at 23:12h, 08 April

      Thank you, Janis, for being such a loyal reader of all my ramblings.

    • Dave
      Posted at 09:23h, 14 April

      Excellent essay! It is funny that I grew up in almost the same era, yet school desegregation did not affect me at all. I lived in El Paso at the time and attended high school with almost every ethnic person imaginable. I remember hearing about the problems on the news but gave them little consideration.

      Your final conclusion regarding comments on Facebook is accurate. Unfortunately our Congress is as divided and dysfunctional as I have ever seen. Hopefully this country will mature and change for the
      better.

  • Georganne
    Posted at 10:43h, 06 April

    So well written and so very true. I feel like we have made headway and recently taken some back steps. Praying that we can soon begin moving forward as an UNdivided nation again. Love you, my sweeet friend.

    • lisaweldon
      Posted at 23:12h, 08 April

      Undivided. Imagine that!

  • Sallye
    Posted at 13:06h, 06 April

    Lisa,
    This is beautifully written and covers so much of the situation as it existed and still exists. As you know Fred and I went to North Africa when we were small and were in school there for many, many years. In both Egypt and Libya we were in school with children of all colors. It was the norm not the exception. We were each treated the same, no matter what color you were or what language you spoke. I never experienced a feeling of difference in anyone until I returned to the United States. What a cultural shock.

    We perpetuate what we are taught and see around us as small children. This type of teaching is where the change must start. Children do not see skin color. They love one another if left to their own devices and are not influenced by bias of others. We need to teach our children to love one another no matter the color. I hope I have succeeded in doing that with the one I was fortunate to raise to a responsible adulthood.

    I agree with you. It needs to stop.

    I believe we have made headway, but there is still a long way to go to perfection. I am tired of the arguing, fighting and basic ugly interaction we see around us daily. It comes from all quarters…TV, newspapers, Facebook and on and on. Fifty years is plenty of time for things to change. It is more than enough time for humans to learn care for each other, to be friends and learn to live in peace and harmony. I personally do not want to wait another half a century to pass before things “sort themselves out”.

    • lisaweldon
      Posted at 23:11h, 08 April

      Yeah, what a gift. A great perspective for a child to learn from early in life! I have a similar experience having grown up in El Salvador, thus my love of Spanish folk. We’re due another one of our long phone calls…you know, the ones where we solve ALL of the world’s problems. I love you!

  • Sherry Coats
    Posted at 21:26h, 06 April

    Very intuitive words, Lisa. I agree that it seems some of the tension and fear of those times are prevalent today…and maybe even becoming more so. On a different note, it was easy to imagine that dinner party in my mind. And kinda fun to imagine the true identities of the Hendersons, Morgans, and Colemans!!

    • lisaweldon
      Posted at 23:08h, 08 April

      Oh, Sherry, how funny. Yeah, you probably know the cast of characters. All good people, really good people. Just the times.

  • Kelly
    Posted at 22:41h, 08 April

    Thank you for sharing. I felt like I was there.

    • lisaweldon
      Posted at 23:07h, 08 April

      Thank you for reading it! I wished you’d been in Atlanta today. A friend and I had an incredible walk through a really historic area of the city. You would’ve loved it.

  • Martha Alexander
    Posted at 20:01h, 10 April

    Thanks for sharing this, Lisa. It does bring back those days of fear and the racism that was so obvious in our lives.

    • lisaweldon
      Posted at 06:44h, 11 April

      It’s so hard to believe it was ever that way.

  • Maureen Goldman
    Posted at 11:24h, 16 April

    Thanks for this thoughtful and eloquent post. Race relations and the general condition of our country are vital concerns.